Nordic states push for circumcision ban

AT meeting Oslo last week, Nordic ombudsmen for children, paediatricians, and paediatric surgeons agreed a resolution urging their national governments to work for a ban on non-therapeutic circumcision of under-age boys.

According to this report, the children’s ombudsmen from the five Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland – along with the Chair of the Danish Children’s Council and the Children’s spokesperson for Greenland passed a resolution to:

Let boys decide for themselves whether they want to be circumcised.

The ombudsmen concluded that:

Circumcision without a medical indication on a person unable to provide informed consent conflicts with basic principles of medical ethics.

They found the procedure:

To be in conflict with the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, articles 12, and 24 (3) which say that children should have the right to express their own views and must be protected from traditional rituals that may be harmful to their health.

Dr Antony Lempert, a GP and spokesperson for the UK Secular Medical Forum (SMF) applauded this historic resolution and urged the UK and devolved Governments to work towards protecting all UK children at risk of forced genital cutting. He said:

This important statement by the Nordic child protection experts is grounded in common sense. Children’s basic rights to bodily integrity and to form their own beliefs should not be overridden because of their parents’ religious or cultural practices.

Dr Lempert argued that:

With an increasing awareness of serious irreversible harm caused to boys and girls from forced genital cutting it is time for the genitals of all children to be protected from people with knives and strong religious or cultural beliefs. There can be no justification for healthy children to be forcibly cut. All children deserve society’s protection from serious harm.

In 2011, a Danish study found that circumcised men faced an increased risk of experiencing delayed orgasm, and their female partners had an increased risk of not feeling sexually fulfilled.

Some 5,000 sexually active men and women were surveyed about their experiences and possible problems with their sex lives. With a specific focus on circumcised men and their women, the results were described as “startling”.

Said one of the researchers, Associate Professor Morten Frisch from Danish research enterprise SSI:

Circumcised men are three times as likely to experience a frequent inability to reach an orgasm … Previous studies into male circumcision have looked at the effects it has on the men. But scientists have never really studied the effects this has on the women’s sex lives.

It appears that women with circumcised men are twice as likely to be sexually frustrated. They experience a three-fold risk of frequent difficulties in achieving orgasm, and an eight-fold risk of feeling pain during intercourse – also known as dyspareunia.

According to Frisch, the study has received a great deal of international attention. For example, he has been contacted by politicians in California, who are very pleased with the results of the study because they wanted to ban circumcision in their federal state.

Others are less excited, saying the research is controversial.

Frisch added:

This is a highly sensitive issue, and some people oppose the publication of this kind of research. Some people have actually tried to stop the publication of our article.

Certain groups and individuals are lobbying in favour circumcising all men, explained Frisch. Not necessarily out of religious concern, but because they believe that circumcision has a health-promotional effect. Pro-mutilationists frequently argue that cicumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection.

70 Responses to “Nordic states push for circumcision ban”

@ronco: You make a good point about God messing up the human body. We are cobbled together with bits from our ancient past and we suffer as a result. My dog has a far better designed back than humans who endlessly suffer from back problems.

@Barry Duke: Loved the cat on the computer pics. We suffer from cat on computer problems.

“This picture is highly manipulative as most are done when the boy is an infant and won’t remember”.

No it isn’t and no they are not. The largest number of victims of ritual mutilation are Muslims.The preferred age for penis mutilation is when the boy has learned to read the Koran from cover to cover, so in many Islamic countries it done between the age of seven and ten.

Broga, I don’t suffer from a cat on the computer problem, but I do have a miniature pinscher that jumps on my lap when I am at the keyboard. And as for backache, I have barely been able to move the past two days for back pain. And all I did was sneeze!

@Barry Duke: I can sympathise with the back pain. I casually, and I realised later carelessly, bent and picked my daughter up from a high sided cot. That was over 40 years ago and I have been stuck with a problem ever since.

Zach, the urinary infections/STD/HIV argument is utter nonsense and has been debunked many times before. As your Biology knowledge is poor, you may like to know that Women are quite prone to UTI’s because our Urethra are a couple of inches shorter than a males. I’ll stick my neck out and say that most Women have better personal than some men.

I see Bob has resorted to type by answering with bits from his favourite book of myths. I’m sure if we asked him the value of pi he would say 3 and the age of the Earth as 6000 years. At least Ken, who used to come here, attempted a coherent argument.

If God or Allah or whoever had intended for boys not to have foreskins, he wouldn’t have equipped them so. Unless he gets a kick out of the pain these innocent children experience.

Same thing for girls and FGM.

MGM and FGM have no health benefits (quite the opposite in fact) and no possible justification.

Basically, what these evil motherf*ckers are doing is torturing little boys and girls in the name of superstition. It’s grievous bodily harm and should result in jail terms for those who administer or assist this procedure.

Ah, Bob, as you’re commenting on this site, I’ll speak to you through this forum rather than your blog.

1. Please don’t quote that fool says there’s no god garbage. It’s just silly, meaningless and entirely unoriginal. Many a religiobot has quoted it because they have nothing original nor substantial to say

2. If you really think that saying sorry to god makes up for every bad thing you’ve done in life, either you’re fucking crazy or your god is. If there is such a place as heaven, I don’t want to go there if the likes of Hitler and Stalin might be there, just because they’ve said sorry.

3. If you really think the ultimate sin is denying your god exists, then it really is you who’s the loon.

4. Adults swear. Grow up and get used to it.

5. Calling police officers fascists and Brownshirts just because they arrest one of your fellow fruitcakes is probably not a good idea. Who knows who is an officer of the law, and who you might piss off by making such remarks. I myself might be in the police force. But then again, maybe I’m not. Think on that for a while.

6. Back to the Bible. Please, don’t bother quoting any of it to atheists. There really is no point.

7. Similarly, don’t bother offering to pray for us. Prayer is there to bolster the ego of the pray-er. It serves no other purpose.

8. Some people are gay. There’s nothing wrong with that. So don’t waste your time trying to show them the error of their ways, because the only error is yours.

9. If any of your brain cells start to function normally and you realise what a mistake you’ve made regarding this god crap, do get in touch. We atheists are, on the whole, a decent bunch, and we’d be happy to guide you towards the light.

10. Stay away from children. Don’t try to infect them with your madness. Just stay away.

@ The Woggler: Bob Hutton is a narcissist. He gets off every time he receives attention on the interweb because he cannot get it anywhere else. I reckon your post has given him a month’s worth of wank fodder.

I believe the rumor of health benefits from circumcision stem from a single study done long ago in sub-Saharan Africa among a chiefly prostitute population. In other words, the most HIV-ridden place on Earth. So basically, it was the only place where HIV is dense enough for the minute chance of foreskin prevention to be even noticeable statistically. What is NEVER talked about is the difficulty circumcision creates in sex for men. It is a medical fact that it reduces sensation. So, because someone cut my genitals before I could consent, I will never enjoy sex as much as I could have, and will always have difficulty achieving orgasm. JUSTIFY THAT TO ME. Explain why that shouldn’t have been my decision later in life (one which I would not have made.)

Btw…the orthodox Jewish method that involves the rabbi sucking the baby’s freshly cut dick, spitting out the blood and then feeding it to the baby and its family is officially the most indefensible, fucked up, “if it wasn’t religion it’d be a jail sentence” ritual I’ve ever heard of.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has condemned male circumcision as a human rights violation.

A report by the Council said male circumcision for religious reasons was “particularly worrisome”, with the procedure being “increasingly questioned”.

“Even within religious communities, an increasing number of people have started questioning traditional but harmful practices and looking for alternatives,” lead author Marlene Rupprecht wrote.

“Having explored this issue in detail during the recent legislative debate in my own country, Germany, I would like to show why circumcision applied to young boys clearly is a human rights violation against children, although it is so widely performed both in the medical and in the religious context.”

European military traditions consider the cruelty as the part of the heroic conduct,and the Jews are too weak for the cruelty.
The cruel hunts in todays Europe keep this tradition of the cruelty.
These anti-semitic hypocricy crocodile tears about the Jewish(!) boys` sufferings is simply rediculouse.